The next president of the nation’s largest LGBT political group will be Chad Griffin, a California activist who has made a name for himself by initiating and orchestrating one of the most important legal challenges in LGBT history. Griffin will replace current Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese on in June.

Griffin, 38, is the founder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the group that enlisted the legal services of some of the nation’s best lawyers to launch a lawsuit against California’s ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8. The lawsuit, which so far has been succeeded in having Proposition 8 declared unconstitutional in both federal district court and by a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Supreme Court, is considered one of the most important pieces of litigation in LGBT history.

“We’re ecstatic to have someone of Chad’s caliber as our next president,” said HRC Co-chair Tim Downing and HRC Foundation Co-chair Sandra Hartness, in a joint statement. “His superior credentials and achievements, both as a visionary and strategist, make him uniquely qualified to lead this organization forward. Chad has a proven track record of consistently delivering results during his career. That’s something that our community rightly expects and deserves.”

Through an HRC press release, Griffin said he was honored by the HRC board’s decision.

“While there’s no doubt that we’ve made tremendous progress on the road to equality, we must not forget that millions of LGBT Americans still lack basic legal protections and suffer the consequences of discrimination every day,” said Griffin. “Today’s generation of young people, and each generation hereafter, must grow up with the full and equal protection of our laws, and finally be free to participate in the American dream. As HRC president, I’ll approach our work with a great sense of urgency because there are real life consequences to inaction.”

Log Cabin Republicans’ national president R. Clarke Cooper called Griffin “a leader who knows achieving victory will require advocacy and champions on both sides of the [partisan] aisle.”

Solmonese, whose contract with HRC was scheduled to end this month, will stay on until Griffin takes the helm June 11.

Griffin was a relative unknown to the LGBT community nationally until he organized the lawsuit, Perry v. Brown, against Proposition 8. He enlisted lead attorneys Ted Olson and David Boies, two of the best and best known attorneys in the country, to take the case, drawing a flood of publicity and optimism to the prospects for success in striking down the ban.

The announcement of that lawsuit drew resistance from many established LGBT legal activists at first. Many thought that taking the marriage issue into federal court —a seemingly inevitable issue for the U.S. Supreme Court— was risky and premature, given the growing conservatism of the high court. They wanted a lawsuit to evolve out of a careful campaign of public education. Even renowned constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe believed the timing was risky. Tensions were so high at one point, Griffin’s legal team opposed the appointment of LGBT legal groups as intervenors in the case, leaving the LGBT community essentially out of the loop in a case that would directly impact it.

But as the litigation developed, Griffin and his litigators began to work with LGBT legal group leaders and the tensions turned quickly into teamwork.

Prior to founding the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), Griffin was a founding partner of the political communications and campaign firm of Griffin|Schein in Los Angeles.

A native of Arkansas, Griffin also worked for a time in the White House communications office of President Bill Clinton.

HRC is perhaps the LGBT national community’s most stable organization, having changed leaders on a fairly consistent basis every six years. The organization was established in 1978 by Steve Endean and hired Washington, D.C., activist Vic Basile as executive director in 1983. Basile was followed by Massachusetts activist Tim McFeeley in 1989, California leader Elizabeth Birch in 1995, Washington operative Joe Solmonese in 2005, and now by Griffin.

One response to “HRC taps Chad Griffin as president”

How far we have come! As I suggested in a related post, Mr. Griffin, a politico of obvious skill, does not arrive at HRC unblemished. He made the grotesque and craven choice to hire Ken Mehlman to raise money for AFER. But what would we expect from an experienced operator like Mr. Griffin? We would expect exactly that. Maybe we should cheer. Gay people are now represented by members of the American establishment’s political class. Could that be a bad thing? Isn’t sitting at the table with powerful people good for us?
Maybe. Depending what you do when you get to the table. If Mr. Griffin thinks hiring Ken Mehlman is what you do, HRC will remain a perfect example of what it is.

Your support keeps us going. Thank you!

A Closer Look

The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 26 decision striking down state bans against same-sex marriage has been touted as “probably the strongest manifesto in favor of marriage” and pilloried as “a threat to American democracy.” The huff and puff will soon die down, and here’s a look at the legal bricks that will remain standing and why some might think the dissent is crying “wolf.”

Breaking News

A U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission decision Thursday could provide important remedies to thousands of federal workers who might face sexual orientation discrimination and may increase pressure on Congress to advance the ENDA.

June 26 has been solidified as the historic date for LGBT history in the United States. It is the day in 2003 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not enforce laws prohibiting same-sex adults from having intimate relations. It is the day in 2013 when a Supreme Court procedural ruling enabled same-sex couples to marry […]

In a widely expected yet stunning victory for LGBT people nationally, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today (June 26) that state bans on marriage for same-sex couples are unconstitutional. The decision requires states to both issue marriage licenses to couples and to recognize marriage licenses obtained in other states by same-sex couples.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6 to 3 decision, upheld the right of the federal government to provide health care insurance subsidies to people with low income in states that have chosen not to participate in the Affordable Care Act by setting up insurance “exchanges.”

The decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, is a big political victory for the Obama administration and a big relief for people with low incomes, including many people with HIV.

It is a rare occasion when LGBT legal activists find themselves on the same side of a case as the conservative Christian Legal Society and the National Association of Evangelicals. It is also rare to find LGBT legal activists on the same side as conservative Justice Antonin Scalia and his fondness for hewing to the original explicit language of a law.

But so it was with EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch June 1, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an employer cannot escape federal law’s requirement to accommodate a job applicant’s religious practices by claiming the applicant never told the employer about his or her religious practices.